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"The private investment companies bring little to nothing in the way of
technical, product or personnel resources that would improve Avaya solutions in
either the near or long term, and have not revealed a growth strategy that would
benefit customers and partners," wrote Brian Riggs, research director for
enterprise communications at Current Analysis.

Avaya accepted a $8.2bn bid from investment firms TPG Capital and Silver Lake
Partners on Monday. But the company said that it will solicit proposals from
other interested parties in the meantime.

Competitors including
Cisco and
Nortel are
rumoured to have expressed interest in acquiring the enterprise telephony
provider.

Riggs also suggested that
Alcatel-Lucent
could benefit from acquiring the company that was spun out of Lucent in 2000.

The PG Capital and Silver Lake Partners acquisition seems primarily to be
financially motivated. As a private company, Avaya is freed from disclosing its
financial position and no longer faces pressure from investors to accelerate
revenue growth.

"Taking Avaya private is driven in part by flat sales, limited profitability
and flat to decreasing market share in telephony ports shipped. It is unclear
how the buyout by Silver Lake and TPG Capital will remedy this situation,"
noted Briggs.

But customers could perceive the change in corporate organisation as a
disadvantage because they are no longer able reliably to gauge the provider's
financial stability and market momentum.

The lack of a technology vision, furthermore, could result in "demoralised
employees, worried resellers and skittish customers".

Instead the move could be interpreted as a last ditch effort to turn the
company round in the wake of increasing competition from
Microsoft
and Cisco.

Riggs urged customers to pressure the firm to ensure the future development
of product lines.